Some time ago I’ve written a documentation with the topic “filter design”. My goal was to write down what I’ve learned, so that I don’t forget it. This actually works! Since there are a some people interrested in this, I’ll make this document public now. It isn’t finished at all, but I don’t know if this ever gonna happen.

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Monday, May 27th, 2013 at 1:28 am and is filed under Uncategorized.
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I’ve finished a new song, it took very long, because I had some other stuff to do. It’s the first track, that I’ve uploaded on soundcloud, and right now it’s not signed to a label… so let’s see what happens.

This entry was written on
Friday, September 10th, 2010 at 3:44 am and is filed under Song parts.
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In the last year, KVR anounced a new Developer Contest, so I came up with the idea for TranceDrive. Basically it is a subtractive synth like many other, the challenge was to build it completely from scratch using SynthMaker. So, every single part of it was custom made, and optimized to the limits (of SynthMaker). Also I don’t use the standard FX from SynthMaker, instead I made my own versions by using some hints from Harmony Central. After concentrating on all this technical stuff, I forgot to submit the result for the KVR Developer Contest. Shit happens!

So, enough about the story here are the facts:

TranceDrive is a subtractive synthesizer, that was build for Trance music. That means, it has builtin supersaw oscillators for realy fat synths and pads, harsh filters, a trancegate and a hugh reverb effect.

the LFOs can be synchronized to the host tempo or run free at a specific frequency

each LFO can control multiple parameters of each OSC, you can even assign several LFOs to the same parameter

LFO1 can control the filter cutoff

2 Envelope generators (Mod & Amp) with variable shapes

the modulation envelope can control multiple parameters of each OSC, and it can also be mixed with the LFOs. Additionally it can control the filter cutoff

3 types of filters: lowpass, highpass and bandpass

each filter type can be set to 6dB, 12dB, 18dB and 24dB steepness

9 effects, and they can be used at the same time: gater, chorus, phaser, flanger, distortion, delay, reverb, equalizer, stereo-effects

each of the unused parts of the synth is shown with less contrast, so you can focus on the active parts

the output of the synth can be clipped to avoid overdriving noise. The clipping is done with a soft limiter, that can be used to compress the whole synth sound (just enable clip and turn up the main volume)

Of course you’ll also find the standard features that every synth supports, but I don’t want to list them here, that’s just too much

Right now there are only a few presets, I’m not good in programming this and I don’t want to waste my time with stuff, that every musician can do. Hopefully someone else makes a nice bank and I can include it in an update, but right now I haven’t this person

The LoopDrive plugin received a major update. The version 4 of it was posted a long time ago in the SynthMaker forum, now this is the official release. I had to wait for a stable version of SynthMaker so that’s why there was a big delay.

There are many new features and most of the old parts are now optimized, here are some of the most significand changes:

Nearly every part of the audio processing has been optimized in assembler

compared with version3, this version is up to 3 times faster

added a pattern manager, that allows up to 8 different sequencer and LFO patterns that are switchable through midi keys

load & save, copy & paste parts or whole patterns. There are also some default patterns.

the wave LFO has been replaced by a step/matrix LFO, so you can set volume, balance, filter cutoff, filter resonance, overdrive amount and grain pitch for every single step

you can scale the modulation amount for a whole pattern of the step LFO with a single knob

each mouse move in the step sequencer now highlights the used wave slice

you have the option to mute a complete step with the right mouse button in the step sequencer

updated the FX Routing GUI to make it easier to understand

added interpolation option to the slicer, so you can avoid aliasing effects when you need it

fixed a problem with the mix knob of the distortion section

There are also some more changes that I propably forgot, but try it yourself. If you like it, leave a comment.

I’ve fixed a minor bug in the LoopDrive VST plugin. If you load the plugin with its initial loop, there was a error message saying that it couldn’t find the wave file. I removed this message, and if you now load in wrong wave files it doesn’t use the windows message box for showing the error message, because in some hosts it causes the audio drivers to stop working.

This entry was written on
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 10:39 am and is filed under SynthMaker, VST-Plugins.
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This entry was written on
Sunday, June 29th, 2008 at 10:30 am and is filed under Song parts.
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This melody was made long time ago, using a JP8000. I’ve tried many times to make a song out of it, but I never found a good arrangement. Due to the fact that I don’t have the JP8000 anymore I’ve made a VSTi based version:

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I’ve already made a lot of variations, but I only found this one to demonstrate:

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This entry was written on
Saturday, June 28th, 2008 at 5:07 am and is filed under Song parts.
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The following arpeggio was made this month, so it is the newest thing that I made. As most of my unfinished song stuff, this part has no name, and for me the easiest way to manage unfinished stuff, is to give it the name of month in which it was created. That’s better than having project files with “untitledXYZ” as filename

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And like in the previous posts, here is the midi file. Use it when you like it, and leave a comment when you’ve finished something.

This entry was written on
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 6:03 pm and is filed under Song parts.
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This song idea was my attempt to make stupid German “hands up” trance. For those who don’t know what this is: damn, you’re lucky. I don’t like that style anymore, but 3 years ago when I made it, that kind of style was IN, and you could hear it in any club in Germany. So here is the original “draft” that I made 3 years ago:

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And here is a version that I made yesterday:

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This entry was written on
Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 4:04 am and is filed under Song parts.
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